A Mets Jingle Outlasts Its Author

By

Joshua Robinson

July 2, 2011

Even to the most assiduous student of Mets lore, the name Ruth Roberts probably never rang a bell. But when she died Thursday night at the age of 84, she left behind one of the most universally recognizable elements of the franchise: "Meet the Mets,'' the catchy, brassy anthem she wrote in 1961.

With its eternally peppy optimism, "Meet the Mets" has endured for 50 years as a fixture at Mets games and in broadcasts. The theme song was co-written in 1961 by Ruth Roberts, who died on Thursday night.

For half a century, this peppy jingle, which was written to encourage a skeptical town to "step right up and greet the Mets," which were then a brand-new team, has followed the franchise to two new ballparks. Through good seasons and bad, it has optimistically guaranteed that the Mets will deliver "the time of your life."

"It's one of the most charming, endearing parts of the Mets' history," said Bob Thompson, a professor of music at SUNY Purchase and the head of the Baseball Music Project. "It was about the honesty and the purity of the game. It turned the spotlight away from the players and onto the fans."

"Meet the Mets'' is actually slightly older than the team itself. It was commissioned in the fall of 1961 before the team's inaugural season. Roberts wrote it with her long-time collaborator, the composer Bill Katz, who died in 1988. At a time when sports music was dominated by fight songs about crushing the opposition to a fine paste, "Meet the Mets" stood apart by sounding decidedly chummy.

Meet the Mets

(Official Song of the New York Mets)

Meet the Mets Meet the Mets Step right up and greet the Mets

Bring your kiddies, Bring your wife Guaranteed to have the time of your life Because the Mets are really sockin' the ball Knockin' those home runs over the wall

East Side, West Side, Ev'ry body's comin' down To meet the M E T S Mets Of NewYork town.

Oh, the Butcher and the baker and the people on the streets, Where did they go? (Crowd) to MEET THE METS!

Oh, they're hollerin' and cheerin' and they're jumpin' in their seats. Where did they go? (Crowd) to MEET THE METS!

All the fans are true to the orange and blue, So hurry up and come on down 'Cause we've got ourselves a ball club, The Mets of New York town.

Come on and Meet the Mets Meet the Mets Step right up and greet the Mets

Bring your kiddies, Bring your wife Guaranteed to have the time of your life Because the Mets are really sockin' the ball Knockin' those home runs over the wall

East Side, West Side, Ev'ry body's comin' down To meet the M E T S Mets Of New York town. Of New York town.

Fittingly perhaps, given the Mets' years of futility, the song barely mentions winning. The single reference to success on the field—"Because the Mets are really sockin' the ball / Knockin' those home runs over the wall"—has, more often than not, stood as an empty promise.

Sam Roberts, Ruth's brother, pointed out that the song was always meant to have that friendly tone. "This song is not about baseball," he said in a recent telephone interview. "It's not about the game and there's nothing violent about it. It's about having a nice day at the ballpark."

The song remains in the Citi Field organist's repertoire. Versions are played during the SNY television and WFAN radio game broadcasts. But the primary sources of royalties on the song, according to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), are reruns of two popular syndicated shows, "Seinfeld'' and "Everybody Loves Raymond,'' in which the song made cameos.

"Meet the Mets'' was by no means Roberts's only hit. In fact, it was not even her only baseball-themed hit.

A gifted pianist, she began traveling from her home in Port Chester, N.Y. to the legendary Brill Building on Broadway to sell songs when she was in high school. One of her biggest hits was "The First Thing Ev'ry Morning (And the Last Thing Ev'ry Night)," performed by Dean Martin.

Her first major sports song was "Mr. Touchdown, USA," which she wrote with Katz and her husband, Gene Piller, in 1950. Six years later, they had their first baseball hit with "I Love Mickey,'' about Mickey Mantle. And in 1960, they penned "It's a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame,'' which used to be a fixture at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

So by 1961, when the Mets and the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson were trying to craft their image in a market that still resented the loss of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, Roberts and Katz were already well established.

Several months before kicking off their inaugural season, the Mets decided to place their branding in the hands of New Yorkers. They ran a contest for a logo and also put out a call for a theme song.

Roberts's entry was one of 19 songs they considered. (the team also paid a New York cartoonist $1,000 for a logo design that showed the Manhattan skyline set inside a baseball with cursive letters—a logo that the team still uses.)

After some edits were made by the Mets' general manager, the song was finally released to the public in the spring of 1963. The original version was performed by the Glenn Osser Orchestra. It was played on the radio and inside the Polo Grounds in a bid to generate buzz for a team that had just lost 120 games.

ENLARGE

Ruth Roberts

For the fans who could not get enough of it, the Mets sold 45-rpm records of "Meet the Mets'' for $1 as a souvenir of the Polo Grounds, the Mets' home during their first two seasons of existence. One side of the disc featured the classic version with vocals while the other had an instrumental rendition.

According to one news report from May 1963, the records were immediately popular. The Mets sold more than 4,000 copies at the ballpark and through the mail during the first two months of the season. And in case fans still needed more "Meet the Mets,'' they could buy the sheet music for 85 cents.

Over the years, artists have tried to update the song. In 1999, there was a rhythm-and-blues version floating around. And in 1984, the Mets tried to jazz up the music and tweak the lyrics, replacing "Bring your kiddies, bring your wife / Guaranteed to have the time of your life," with, "Hot dogs, green grass all out at Shea / Guaranteed to have a heck of a day."

But none of changes ever eclipsed the original version. "It's so stylized, it couldn't have been written in any other period but the early 1960s," Thompson said. "It's so corny—and that's what makes it beautiful."

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